Today I am going to write about a book I have been reviewing during the past weeks, called:Tkinter GUI Application Development.
On my previos blog post I wrote about how difficult is to create GUI software with #Tkinter, compared as I did with Visual Studio when I programmed VB6.
The action “behind” Visual Studio 6 when you drag and drop controls to a form, modifying colors, fonts, … is code creation: every time you make an action like drag and drop controls, move a control, … code is being generated for you by Visual Studio, and the good point is that you can have the result inmidiatly (WYSIWYG). That’s easy to create GUI programs in VB6, but it is not as easy to do it with Tkinter, and to see the result of your code you need tu run the code.
The book is preferred for those Python developers with some background, and now they decide to go further developing GUI apps. If you hope to program with Tkinter as you do with VB6 …. you’d better read this book to understand what’s happening in your code!
The book Tkinter GUI Application Development starts with a brief description about what is Tkinter, what is useful for, pros, cons, …. and if you choose it as a GUI environment, how to start with a simple window (first, with no content!).
from Tkinter import * root = Tk() root.mainloop()
That’s the starting point for everything!!
The first chapter of the book is the one you need to put all your attention, because of its content: there is a lot of code showing how to use several Tkinter widgets , and the most important thing for designing GUI apps: control position and events. In my opinion, this chapter is esential for understanding the rest of the book, where you will code real apps, also introducing a lot of #Python tips, very useful for you!.
The second chapter will focus your attention in developing a Notepad app, where you learn how to work with files, styles, actions like copy, paste, … and creating help forms, and more.
Notepad withTkinter
The third chapter shows how to create a drum app using visual controls. The objective is to learn OOP with Tkinter, and also learn another widgets not used with Notepad!
Chapter 4 is for chess players. You’ll learn how to work with canvas widget, while chapter 5 aims you to create an MP3 Player, showing you new widgets like progress bars, Listbox, Scale y PMW Balloon, and also introducing you to audio packages. On chapter 6 you can create a Paint app where you can learn about the Pithon Image Library, PIL.
The last chapters are dedicated to several small projects, including a database app.
PhoneBook with Tkinter
Of course, I would like the view to go further on database GUI programming, but I think the content of the book is so wide as to learn a lot!
To end with …
The book is easy reading, easy to understand, step by step for the new developer, and with high value content, all very well explained, and …
If you want to create horrible fomrs is because you want it, not because of the technology!
I must admit Tkinter was a technology that doesn’t call my attention, old-fashion look, but … now, I admit I’ll use it for Pythoin GUI programming!
So, if I were you, I’d buy the book.
Have a nice day!